Obama Praises 'Outstanding' Intelligence After Killing Hostages

April 25, 2015Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com

One day after admitting that US drones had killed two Western hostages in Pakistan because of an intelligence failure, President Obama cheered US intelligence as the most capable in the world. "You do an outstanding job," Obama said, bragging the US intelligence community had "showed that Syria had chemical weapons," something they freely admitted, and had "revealed Russian aggression in Ukraine," something the US continues to insist without providing any evidence.

(April 24, 2015) -- One day after admitted that US drones had killed a pair of Western hostages in Pakistan because intelligence sources had no idea who was in the site they were blowing up, President Obama is cheering US intelligence as the most capable in the world.

"You do an outstanding job," Obama said of the US intelligence community, bragging that they had "showed that Syria had chemical weapons," something they freely admitted, and had "revealed Russian aggression in Ukraine," something the US continues to insist without providing any evidence.

Obama went on to insist that the US was not being "cavalier" about killing the hostages in a drone strike, suggesting he either isn't clear on the meaning a cavalier or doesn't realize how cavalier he sounds.

The White House has conceded that in the strike in question they had no idea who the strike was even aiming at, and that it was part of a broad policy of targeting "suspected al-Qaeda compounds.

Though the White House continues to insist they have a standard on strikes that they need "near certainty" no civilians are present, the simple fact that they routinely carry out strikes with no idea who they're aiming at shows this is not the case.

Historically, the US has relied on the fact that everyone they kill ends up getting labeled a "suspect" simply because they got hit by the US, and that the overwhelming number of victims are never identified at all.

(April 24, 2015) -- Despite President Obama's outspoken praise for the intelligence community in the wake of revealing a pair of Western hostages killed in January, the drone war which has become a centerpiece of his foreign policy is often carried out in an intense fog.

There have been occasional inquiries in the past about "signature strikes," the administration's policy of carrying out strikes on totally unidentified people they think are acting like terrorists might act.

All this language really means, however, and it's something that's becoming increasingly apparent, is that when President Obama signs off on a strike and some CIA agent pushes a button, the US often has no real idea who they're about to kill.

The January hostage killings reveal this in more ways than one, as the US struck what it figured was an "al-Qaeda compound," which is the official way of saying they blew up a house. They had no idea who was inside, except that there might be al-Qaeda.

And in this case there were. The strike killed six people, including the two hostages. Also killed were a pair of American al-Qaeda members, neither of whom had been put on the president's already legally dubious kill list, meaning they were likewise extrajudicial killings of American citizens.

Indeed, after all this we still don't know who the other two out of the six were, though the fact that the administration isn't presenting this as an "all's well that ends well" situation indicates they, like most of the victims of US drone strikes, were nobody of any consequence.

That's the US drone war all over. A lot of people are killed, only a handful are ever identified at all, and when the US does happen to kill some real al-Qaeda leader, they seem as surprised as anybody, because they sure didn't know they were aiming at him.

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